Not bad for 100 days - Progress report on Barack

It's the 100th day of our new president's term in office and a good time to look back at how he's done. I've been on the "O Train" for a long time — having been called an Obama "dog washer" long before they had a dog to wash — so it's no surprise that I approve of the job he's doing. Like everyone who isn't a Haterade-drinking Republican with an axe to grind, I give him high marks. But unlike my fellow Obamaniacs, I don't think he's done any better than an "A-" in his first semester. The "A" is for passing the stimulus package, negotiating the banking and auto industry bail-outs, and setting timetables for closing Guantanamo and for ending the occupation of Iraq. The "minus" is for his handling of the lawyers who crafted the methods in the Bush torture memos and the interrogators who carried them out. An "A+" President has to take a tougher stand for the rule of law. Luckily for our academically-overachieving Chief Executive, there is another smart black guy in D.C. who can help him bring his grade up.

Unless you were hibernating last week, you know President Obama authorized the release of memos detailing CIA interrogation methods approved by George W. Bush that basically amount to torture. Don't be fooled by the fraudulent legal theory that says the methods used went as close to torture as possible without actually becoming torture by definition. The theory assumes no pain and suffering at all until the point of torture, which means it's complete nonsense. Still, the release of these memos made a lot of Republicans very nervous — including Karl Rove and Dick Cheney — and got them complaining about the needs of CIA officers and prosecution of former administration officials based on policy differences.

That's where Eric Holder gets involved. In another time, he would be kind of a big deal as the first black Attorney General. As it is, he's Tracy Morgan to Barack Obama's Tim Meadows: the other black guy. Holder said not only would CIA officers not be prosecuted, but the U.S. government would represent them and cover their costs if they faced legal proceedings overseas. His Justice Department has opened one investigation into whether or not Bush administration attorneys lied in the memos and another into the destruction of at least two videotapes of CIA interrogations using these methods. It's not a crime to give bad legal advice, so hack lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee are safe. But when a federal judge in a criminal trial or a fact-finding investigation like the 9/11 Commission asks for tapes or transcripts of interrogations and you not only don't turn them over, but decide years later to destroy them (as former head of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, Jose Rodriguez reportedly did), you've got serious problems. Rodriguez potentially committed the crime of obstruction of justice and the Bush Justice Department reviewed the tapes before approving that potential crime.

That's not going to sit well with a guy like Holder who called for ending "all U.S. programs and practices that are engaged in torture" last July before he even got this job. He's going to want to know who signed off on the destruction of the tapes, what methods were used, if they were authorized, and by whom. With his A.G. asking the questions in a criminal investigation, the President won't be seen as going after former Bush administration officials when it comes out that these torture methods were approved at the highest levels, possibly even the Oval Office, and were in use months before the memos legalizing them ever existed.

A two-term presidency spans about 3,000 days. Since it's impossible to imagine a Republican successfully challenging his re-election in 2012, we should probably be thinking of Barack Obama's time in office as a marathon and not a sprint. The president is lucky Jose Rodriguez was dumb enough to destroy those tapes because that opened the door to possible criminal charges which would allow the Attorney General to investigate the Bush CIA and the interrogation methods they used. Despite everything else he's done since January, the biggest accomplishment of Obama's first 100 days might be using Washington's other black guy, Holder, to hold the previous administration accountable for their mistakes in order to satisfy his Democratic base while saying it's time for "reflection, not retribution" so he doesn't lose moderate Republicans in the process.

Laughing at Libertarians - This Judge is hilarious

Libertarians make me laugh — mainly because I can't take anyone who uses the terms "nanny-state" and "big government" seriously. It's not that there is anything particularly funny about individual freedom, open markets, and limited regulation, it's that these people don't seem to understand how much the world has changed since they became a political party back in the 1970s.

These days cigarettes can harm non-smokers, the markets have gone global, and the only growth industry in our shrinking economy is white collar crime. Yet Libertarians still argue against smoking bans, against regulation, and against government spending.

They remain committed to the idea that government is, by definition, a problem and can never be the answer — despite the fact that the government is the only single entity willing and able to spend the money needed to get the economy moving again. Libertarians generally miss the fact that governments create markets, markets don't create governments. And when business crosses borders, toothpaste made in China can make people sick in Chicago and risky bets made in London can bankrupt the largest insurance company in America.

Which brings us to last Thursday's Daily Press and Judge James Gray's "Libertarian Perspective" column on changing employment law to make it easier to fire employees. The issue of the list of legal reasons for firing someone being very, very long, and the list of illegal reasons for firing someone being very, very short is personal for me. I was once one of the most vulnerable, least legally protected workers in this town: assistant to a minor celebrity.

On the promise that I would get to write his biography, I worked seven days a week (sometimes 20 hours a day) to "make it easier" for him to live his life. He fired me because I refused to consent to having my pay illegally docked like a factory worker who owes money at the company store.

Gray says our democracy is on the verge of "collapse" because of our government and its tendency to "destroy private initiative" and offers the self-starter's mantra, "if it's to be, it's up to me" as advice on how we can all work to "fix" the government.

He says, "employers don't hire people just so they can discriminate against and harass them for racial, gender, or sexual-preference reasons and then fire them" and that those employers "have already 'passed the test' by hiring those employees." Of course, that's only if the "test" is whether or not that employer illegally discriminates in hiring.

His next joke is that we should eliminate all legal protection against wrongful termination for all workers for up to two years. He even uses the legal term "protected class" so there is no question about exactly whose rights he wants to take away.

He drives it home saying, "more of these ... people would have jobs" if it weren't for the whole equal protection under the law thing that would prohibit an employer from firing a 63-year-old gay Asian woman for no other reason than she was old, or gay, or Asian, or a woman.

His topper is the idea that after being sued (presumably by one of "these people"), the employer would simply refuse to hire anyone in any protected class (over half of the population) ever again, so current workplace protection "actually works against equality in employment." Then he mysteriously quotes Anne Frank.

I've read some unintentional comedy in this paper, but Judge Gray went above and beyond. Before retiring from the Supremes, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor would always want to know how any change in the law would impact the most vulnerable among us.

Focusing on this kind of every-day application of the law is what makes a great jurist — and not thinking things all the way through is probably why Jim Gray's career peaked on the Orange County bench.

I have a problem with a judge who refers to the existence of "never-ending laws" like it's a bad thing, but I also understand where he's coming from: the 70s, when his party was almost relevant.

Like all Libertarians, this retired civil servant (who probably still collects a pension from Orange County) wants "government" out of his life. That is, until his house in Newport Beach is flooded or on fire. Then he'll be dailing "9-1-1" and waiting for the "nanny state" and its "big government" to send help — just like the rest of us — and as he considers how to get rid of the water or put out the fire, one thing I know he won't be thinking is, "if it's to be, it's up to me."

Shiver me timbers, ninjas - The teenage pirates of Somalia

When I first heard an American ship, the Maersk Alabama, had been attacked by four pirates off the coast of Somalia, I thought I bumped my head and woke up in 1815. And I wondered if these pirates ever really thought they'd get away with a single dollar of ransom money when the biggest, fastest, most powerful maritime fleet in the history of the world — also known as the United States Navy — would be chasing them. As I read more and more about modern Somali pirates, bands of whom have been making millions of dollars holding hijacked ships for ransom, an ugly picture of these four pirates began to emerge and the answer to an age-old question became crystal clear.

To believe that you and three of your friends could actually make money by hijacking an American cargo ship using nothing more than a few AK-47's and the element of surprise, you've got to be young, stupid, high on drugs, or some combination of the three.

As a matter of fact, the four hijackers were all between 17 and 19. As a matter of culture, it's unlikely they had much (if any) education. And as a matter of custom, Somali men often chew khat, a narcotic leaf that produces an amphetamine-like rush followed by a depressing crash. Basically, we were dealing with the Somalian equivalent of teenage tweakers who dropped out in the ninth grade, so it's no big surprise that their plan wasn't very well thought out.

When we think of these pirates as drugged-up high school bad boys, it becomes easier to understand why they made so many mistakes that would have seemed so obvious to anyone who has been around longer than two decades or so. For example, a crewmember stabbed a 17-year-old in the hand when the Alabama was first boarded last Wednesday, despite the fact that the kid was armed with a semi-automatic rifle.

To that crew member, that pirate probably looked more like his son's friend from little league than a bloodthirsty killer; and when you get to be a certain age, a scared teenager looks like a scared teenager — even if he's holding an AK-47. You've got to be pretty stupid to bring a gun to a knife fight and lose, but that's exactly what happened. By Sunday morning, when his hand had become infected, this kid was the first one to turn himself in — and I wouldn't be surprised if the ship's medic cleaned his wound, dressed it with fresh bandages, and gave him a Popsicle.

The teenager in charge of this ragtag group didn't do much better. Time after time in decision after decision, he made the wrong call. Even though they had gotten the drop on the Alabama's unarmed crew, they let the ship's captain, Richard Phillips, convince them to take him hostage, let the crew and the ship go, and try to make their escape (four pubescent pirates and the captain) in an 18-foot enclosed lifeboat. Somehow they got it in their minds that they could negotiate a $2 million ransom for the captain (and their successful escape with the money) from a dinghy. Amazingly, they didn't tie the captain up at first — a move that was revealed to be a mistake when he jumped into the water and tried to swim to freedom on Friday.

A few days later when the seas got choppy and they began to run out of fuel, food, and khat, they had no choice but to accept the Navy's offer to tow them. So by Sunday evening, the 18-foot lifeboat was tethered to a 600-foot warship and Navy SEAL snipers had the three pirates' heads in their sights. Over about 90 minutes, the towline got shortened to 75 feet. Then, in a moment straight out of a Tom Clancy novel, two of the three pirates popped their heads out of a hatch at the exact same time the third pirate was seen pointing his weapon at the captain's back. Three shots, three kills, and a quick extraction later, the captain was safely aboard the USS Bainbridge — and it was all over. Not since Michael Palin's Ken in "A Fish Called Wanda" have I seen such total incompetence in a criminal enterprise that it makes a tragic death seem comically predictable. But as hard as I've tried, I can't see with any other way this could have ended.

Which brings us back to that age-old question: would you rather be a pirate or a ninja? I can imagine this may have been difficult to answer 200 years ago when, historically, pirates were at the top of their game. But not now. Today, it's not even close. The fact that the three pirates left in the lifeboat were all taken out simultaneously by ninja-esque sniper shots to their heads proves the question can only be answered one way. Put simply, a ninja could easily be a pirate, but no matter how hard he tried, a pirate could never become a ninja.

Back in black - What Lindsay Lohan & Jennifer Aniston really need

I am not a beautiful, rich, and famous white girl — and I don't want to be one. As appealing as the job of Pop Princess or Hollywood Starlet might be, it comes at the expense of having a relatively normal love life. From Reese Witherspoon to Uma Thurman and from Jessica Simpson to my Britney, the list of All-American white girls with broken hearts and/or idiot ex-husbands reads like a Who's Who of box office-busting and chart-topping talent.

Recently, two of the biggest names in the business were added to the roster — one who should get used to being on the list and another who should be used to being on it — and I feel so bad for both Lindsay Lohan and Jennifer Aniston that out of the goodness of my heart, I'm going to solve their problems.

Lindsay is really struggling. Last week, she showed up at Villa with her mother, Dina, and her sister, Ali, and actually threatened the doorman saying, "you're making a huge mistake" when he turned them away like Tara Reid. I wonder if Lindsay thought, just for a second, "maybe if I hadn't rolled up with my 15-year-old kitten of a sister and my 46-year-old Cougar of a mother, I'd be in there partying right now."

Then on Friday night, she was kept out of an event at the Chateau Marmont where her girlfriend, Samantha Ronson, was DJ'ing. It was the launch of Samantha's twin sister's clothing line and their mother and brother were both in the house. Apparently the Ronson clan are not Lohan fans and the only way Lindsay was getting in was if she "drives a truck through the red carpet or sky dives." Hot mess that she is, Lindsay showed up anyway. And it took five security guys to make her understand that she wasn't on the guest list.

To make matters worse, the very next day — with the paparazzi capturing every moment — Samantha changed the locks on the house they shared. Talk about a bad break-up. What has happened in Lindsay's world when she, an A-list actress who has made as much as $7 million per picture and who is clearly the pretty one in an experimental lesbian relationship, has to release a statement saying she and her anonymous DJ girlfriend are "taking a brief break so I can focus on myself?"

Jennifer Aniston has checked into the Heartbreak Hotel so often that she gets automatically upgraded to a suite. Her latest stay comes courtesy of the recent end of her on again, off again relationship with John Mayer — which is off again because he broke up with her (again) because she may have been a little too much for him to handle (again).

The story goes that Jen may have had a full-on freakout over the fact that John had time to send messages to his followers on Twitter, but didn't return her calls or respond to her e-mail because he was supposedly busy working. I guess it was one freakout too many, and John dumped her when she got back from promoting her dog movie in Europe.

I can almost understand why a rehab-hopping wild child like Lindsay can't keep a boyfriend (or girlfriend), but Jennifer Aniston is a relatively homebody-ish 40-year-old woman who clearly wants to settle down. It seems to me that if she could just keep her neediness in check (as she reportedly didn't do with John) and refrain from calling her new man "Brad" (as she reportedly did do with John), it shouldn't be this difficult.

My advice to Lindsay and Jen is simple, start dating black guys. You'll feel the benefits almost immediately in your new-found freedom to move around. Right now, it's probably hard to get from place to place because the paparazzi is everywhere. Black guys reserve the right to get ethnic (or "keep it real") in a second, and the average paparazzo knows it.

That alone will lead to a 6-to-8 foot buffer zone whenever you're out in public with your new man. For someone like Jen who may worry that having a baby will ruin her body, being with a black guy makes sense because in addition to also liking her body just the way it is, he's probably already got kids of his own. And they can both rest assured that their black boyfriends will be just as focused on their multimillion-dollar-per-year careers as they are.

If anyone doubts the fact that a relationship with a black guy is the perfect cure for what ails these women, remember that Mariah Carey had a bad case of the crazies and was the poster girl for Hollywood heartache — and we haven't heard a peep from her since she married Nick Cannon.

Make the club topless - April Fool's!

With our perfect weather, boardwalk, ferris wheel, and daily fireworks shows at sunset, we've got it pretty good living here in Santa Monica.

Thanks to $27.5 million of Annenberg Foundation money, it's about to get even better. Later this month when our fair city opens the Annenberg Community Beach House at 415 Pacific Coast Highway, we will be home to the first public beach club in the entire country. It's located on the grounds of a former 110-room mansion built for actress Marion Davies by her married lover, William Randolph Hearst, and in true Santa Monica fashion, the Big Blue Bus will drop people at the door for $1.

Coincidentally, Marion Davies gave the 51% of Hearst's fortune he willed to her when he died back to his family for $1 per year and following her example, money will not be an issue for anyone who wants to enjoy a day on our beautiful beaches - the Annenberg Community Beach House will be free and open to all. I literally want to hibernate for the next month so I don't have to live another day in a world without a free beach club ten minutes away from my apartment.

Operating the facility won't be cheap. The enormous pool & pool house, the splash pad for munchkins, the event house, the gardens, and the observation decks will all have to be staffed and maintained - and there will, of couse, be a need for round-the-clock security to protect this late-night traspasser's paradise.

The bottom line is we're projected to lose about $1.3 million the first year, so we'll be lucky if we lose less than $2 million. With deficits like that (especially in this economy), it won't be long before the Beach House gets sold to a private company - and we all go back to the horror that is a world without a free beach club ten minutes away from my apartment.

Luckily, there is a way to prevent this tragedy from occurring. Three little words that have been credited with saving and, in some cases, creating the pool scene in Las Vegas: European style bathing.

To be clear, I'm not talking about a clothing-optional beach in Santa Monica. Nude beaches aren't all they're cracked up to be (I learned that lesson at Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard), plus we don't want to end up in a naturalist travel guide somewhere and find ourselves overrun by naked, pasty, Midwestern families. I'm talking about a private, members-only section at the Beach House where ladies would have the European-style option of going topless, and gentlemen would absolutely not have the American-style option of making those ladies uncomfortable by staring. Ladies who pay the $10 fee to use the pool, changing rooms, and viewing deck would be allowed in free, and a limited number of gentlemen would be charged an additional $40 for daily membership on top of the pool fee. It's a little expensive, but that's the point.

Not only will it be a fat revenue stream to make up that $1.3 million, but the higher cost prices out the guys who would have a tendency to gawk. Besides, it wouldn't matter if we charged $100, we'd still be turning guys away by 11:00am. I know this because when I first experienced European style bathing in Vegas (complete with music and cocktails), I thought I had died and gone to 8th grade Kenny's version of heaven.

There would also be a benefit to our local economy because women in this town don't mind spending their money to look good (God love 'em).

They're getting up early to do the stairs or hit the gym, they're taking yoga classes, spin classes, and pilates classes during the day, they're running San Vicente after work, and they're biking and hiking in the mountains on the weekends. From the girls at SMC to the moms on Montana and everywhere in between, Santa Monica women are keeping it tight. Who are we to tell them they can't show their girls off if they want to? I say let it all hang out. Knowing these women, it'll be in cute shoes, fabulous hats and glasses, stylish bathing suits, flowing skirts, and dramatic sarongs - all stuffed into new beach bags and all of which they will purchase locally, I hope.

Let's face it, boobs are big in this town. Halle Berry's were powerful enough to carry John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, and a really weak script in "Swordfish," Angelina Jolie's support the "Tomb Raider" franchise on multiple platforms, and Pam Anderson's had enough pull to get her a Comedy Central roast - and she's barely even an actress, much less a comic. So there's no reason why we can't, in a "stay classy, Santa Monica" kind of way, pay for our new Beach House by utilizing the God-given - and surgically enhanced - talents of our city's lovely ladies.